Unsung Heroes

The Plant Brigade

Death on the petals of daisies

22

MAY/14

By the time we reach Zarhun, we’re barely awake. The good news is that there seems to be no signs of battle. Looks like we made it ahead of the killer plant …things. Our jeep is almost out of gas, and this town doesn’t exactly have a gas station where we can fill up. I really don’t want to have to hoof it. The Garrison is our first stop. We arrive at the gates Raharjo begins to SLOWLY tell the guard that there is an army on their way.

“Oh my god, why didn’t you ask to speak to the commander right away!? he screams.

“Um, can we speak to-”

“Oh for the love of… go, GO!”

We head toward the Commander’s post. The guard at the door sullenly asks for Raharjo’s name and rank. Once the information is supplied, the guard wipes his nose and mumbles something like ‘…oh. Those guys. Okay, go on in I guess.’

Raharjo begins to, once again slowly, tell the Commander about what went on and then finally tells her that there is an army of hundreds of plant monsters on their way. She doesn’t exactly look convinced, but we finally manage to get it through to her that we are in fact very serious.

We are given emergency ration gas and told to try and find an army division that passed through town three days ago. It is decided that Ricky will drive since he doesn’t need to sleep and we very obviously do. We head over to the Monastery first. It only takes about thirty minutes to get there and all the ‘little Ricky’s’ stare at us as we drive by. We pull into the middle of camp and begin our search for Tasia and ‘upload’ the latest information. He doesn’t say much, just kind of looks at us and a couple of other Eld come over, and then leave again. As we get ready to leave we notice that a lot of the Eld are …changing out limbs?! O_O It’s sort of macabre and yet I can’t look away. I look at my own arms and try to imagine what it would be like to have a gun instead of an arm. I suddenly find myself with vague images of a spiky haired guy and a large sword… I shake my head. I must be more tired than I realized.

Ricky drives us through the night narrowly avoiding potholes and roots and we notice that there are trampled sections of the road. It definitely looks like an army recently marched through here. We thought perhaps we should try to get some sleep. ‘Try’ being the key word. Ricky has never driven before and though as a Eld, he picked up the basics fairly quickly, he doesn’t yet understand some of the finesse it takes to drive without jarring the less Eld occupants of the vehicle. It is very early in the morning when we wake and Jareth figures that the army division is about a half a day’s march ahead of us. We should reach them in almost no time.

Jareth has the brilliant idea to get on the radio to try and convince them to stop marching so that we can catch up faster. However,we don’t exactly have a code book, or know any codes with in which to comminucate our intentions.He somehow manages to convince them to stay put and that we should reach them in about an hour. We arrive even sooner. It only took about fourty-five minutes to reach them and we are met by a few mounted men. Raharjo gives them a note from the Commander, and they go back to the group and then return with a General. We give him all the info we have, which is admittedly not much, and he starts to command everyone to unload exactly what might be needed for the upcoming ‘battle’. A lot of stuff is going to be left behind and there will be a contingent of men to guard the supplies and everthing else left behind. Trucks are unloaded of gear and reloaded with men. Our jeep is laden down with many supplies and the drive back to Zarhun begins.

On the way we look through a bag of items and divvy up some healing belts, armor, and other items of maiming and exploding. This is going to get ugly and I’m surely going to die. Better to try and take out as many of the enemy as I can.

As we reach Zarhun we can see that the fortified castle and the hill behind it have essentially become a military headquarters. A group of sentries meets us and leads us to the would be front lines. It doesn’t yet look like anything has attacked so that’s a good sign so far. The men we brought back with us are exhausted. We are set out to help set up camps/tents/barracks so the soldiers in the trucks can hopefully get a few hours of much needed rest.

we get near to finishing and a young half kald boy comes to us and says that we are needed at HQ. He looks excited and self important and salutes with much enthusiasm. It’s a strategy meeting.

Jareth, the bastard that he is, bluffed his way into convincing that we could bottleneck the oppostion and then we would go behind them and somehow get them that way.

The meeting is adjourned and we will report back here either in six hours or when scouts return with news. Tasia pulls us aside and tries to ask in depth what our exact plans are. Jareth tells him that he wants to get some gas to drop onto the plant things while I myself use a flying potion to rain down fire on them. He really has no idea. I can’t do much more than look on in horror. It’s the only plan we have and I may have said it before, but I’m going to die. We’re all going to die. And I’m going to kill Jareth when this is all over if he isn’t dead already.